Dictators often rise to power out of conflict or a coup d’etat. However, there have been dictators who got into power democratically or legally. Adolf Hitler, for example, was appointed chancellor, or head of government, by President Paul von Hindenburg in 1933. After Hindenburg DIED, Hitler made himself “FüÂhrer” (a combination of president and chancellor).
So how can you tell if your President is a dictator?
1. Dictators foster cults of personality, a form of hero worship in which the masses are fed propaganda declaring their leader to be flawless and divine.
2. Under a dictatorship, protestors of bad governance are punished harshly
3. Political power is concentrated in the hands of few people or just one person.
4. Media freedom is systematically obliterated, leaving newspapers, radio and television as tools for indoctrination.
5. Intimidation, murder, imprisonment, state-sponsored violence and other human rights abuses are used to control the population.
6. The right to private property is easily abolished.
7. They weaken institutions of governance, and compromise law enforcement agencies to protect individuals in the ruler’s inner circle.
8. Dictators usually have a larger number of security personnel, which is disproportionate to the country’s status.
9. Citizens are not allowed to check the ruler’s power; people’s complaints are condemned and regarded as sponsored sentiments of regime change.
10. Dictators use secret intelligence services to spy on the citizens and monitor private communication.
11. Civilian or not, military is usually a top focus for dictators and they often prioritise defence spending over social services.
12. Dictators never appoint ambitious subordinates as second in command, they prefer figurehead deputies.
13. They accumulate unexplained wealth and invest heavily on their hold to power.
14. Sometimes, dictators do allow elections but they remain in control of the outcome by allowing people to participate in a controlled manner.
15. Dictatorships sometimes come to an end just as chaotically as they began. What happened to Adolf Hitler, Fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and many other autocratic rulers is public knowledge.
3 responses
In the post-cold war dictatorships, “democracy” is often allowed as a means to woo Western donors. The formation of opposition parties, Civil Society Organisations and pressure groups is legalized. The dictatorship is refined into a brinkmanship that allows just enough democracy to gain foreign funds without ceding power to the citizens.
Brilliant constitutions are written without any intention of following their tenets. This appeases the condescending West into hoping that the dictator will one day grow and obey the laws. The West also hopes that a better regime will find these beautiful laws and obey them; even if the current one does not.
With no intentions of repentance, the dictator decides to stay in power to avoid falling victim to a constitution he himself made. Failing this approach, the dictator begins the process of corrupting the current “dangerous” constitution so that it can legalise illegalities and repeal uncomfortable legalities.
The dictator studies his/her own crimes and frames defensive laws that will make his old crimes legal. Since crimes are normally not prosecuted retrospectively, the hope is that any new regime will find it unethical to prosecute the dictator’s old abuses. This leads to odd distortions in third world constitutions or even constitutional declarations of life leadership for the despot.
The only other safe option for the dictator is ignore the Constitution altogether and find a non-Western donor to fund State programs. At this point the Western donor is framed as too interfering and is marginalised. The alternate donor is given great praise and privilege and thus becomes complicit in crimes against citizens.
In addition, actual thefts of remaining Western funds are carried out, a kind of silent “looting”; thus old programs falter and fail. Nevertheless, the looted funds are still a debt and salaries have to be paid. Hence, the State begins to engage in insecure borrowings and illegal trading arrangements to meet funding shortfalls.
In this scenario the dictator becomes captive to the loyal fixers who know everything. These become loyal mini despots in support of the main despot; the terror grows. The new donor also captures the dictator, who thus loses much control of central power. The dictator dare not reform at this point, his friends wont let him. Meanwhile, calls by the citizens for reform increase into a frenzy.
Eventually, the new donor becomes the enemy of the citizens. The donor carries out desperate public works to appease the angry citizens. This is to no avail because all supportive contracts are given to the loyalist fixers who flaunt their wealth insensitively, further angering the many poor. Hence, the new donor’s only option is to heavily fund the dictator’s security apparatus against the citizens. This isolates the security systems from the constitution and from the citizens. It becomes the personal guard of the despot and his loyalists.
The new donor does this to secure the dictator’s tenure who in turn secures their business investments. At this point the dictatorship is increasingly isolated from its citizens. It is totally corrupt, illegally funded, mature in evil, secured by force and difficult to upset. This is the situation in many new third world “democracies”.
Am surprised at myself for not asking the question sooner . . WAY sooner!
(Character traits common to Dictators . . Trudeau is certainly one; Freeland
is deathly AFRAID of Constitutional freedom)
Its nice